Huawei Bringing New Ascend P7 to U.S.

Huawei Wednesday unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the Android-based Ascend P7. The new device continues the Chinese company's efforts to enter the higher end of the smartphone market.

The P7 features a 5-inch HD display, 8-megapixel front-facing and 13-megapixel rear-facing cameras, and the latest Emotion UI 2.3.

The phone, which features a metal bezel that would be familar to users of Apple's iPhone, is also notably thin. Huawei is pitching the 6.5mm-thick device as the "slimmest smartphone" on record.

CNET reports the device will be available in June in countries in Europe and Asia for $625 unlocked, and that Huawei will expand beyond that later, including to the United States.

The P7 comes as companies like Huawei and Lenovo are gaining traction in the smartphone market and increasingly doing so with higher-end devices.

Huawei and Lenovo both managed to sell more smartphones in the first quarter of 2014 than they did in the same quarter last year. According to new numbers from IDC, Huawei kept its third place position worldwide, beating out Lenovo by fewer than a million units. Huawei hopes to sell 80 million smartphones globally in 2014.

In the most recent quarter, both Huawei and Lenovo managed to increase their share of the market about 1 percent annually, to 4.9 percent and 4.6 percent respectively.